Paul Darragh: Shape Up or Ship Out

Paul Darragh left an illustrious career in New York City as an art director and graphic designer for big name brands including Nike, IBM and The New York Times to return home to Aotearoa and commit to becoming an artist full-time. Landing first in his hometown of Matamata before moving to Mount Maunganui where he continues to live and work, Darragh has carved out a painting practice that traverses both gallery and street art contexts.  His new project Shape Up or Ship Out creates a space in which these two elements of his practice dramatically coalesce.

Shape Up or Ship Out takes the iconic shipping containers that dominate Tauranga’s local port as a point of departure, with the long and narrow nature of the gallery itself enhancing this reference. Visual symbols of bar codes, logos and QR Codes are combined and remixed with national and maritime flags to encompass the wider language of the global shipping network.  While the exhibition’s title makes a direct reference to this initial inspiration for the show, Darragh also uses it to address the reality of being an artist and the associated ‘hustle’; it is his continued work in commercial design that funds his career as a practicing artist.

~ Serena Bentley, senior curator, Tauranga Art Gallery.

Reflecting on where the original spark of inspiration for the show came from, Darragh had this to share: 

“When viewing the empty long gallery at TAG during our [Serena Bentley, curator Tauranga Art Gallery and Darragh] initial exhibition meeting, my main takeaway of the space was the large size and the strong linear forms that make up the gallery. I knew this project needed to feel big & bold and it needed to address scale.

I’d also recently travelled to South East Asia, where I found the giant scale of commercial and urban infrastructure remarkable. When flying over the Port of Singapore and Klang Port Malaysia I was struck by the 100s of massive container ships – a seemingly endless collection of sea vessels, silently floating on the water. This got me thinking about the massive global shipping network that connects us all with imported goods, propelling our global economy, and how through COVID this was all completely shaken up and disrupted. We’re still experiencing the rippling effects of this across many industries both here and abroad. This is also a locally relevant issue with Tauranga being home to the largest port in the country and the impact of this massive industry on our culture and economy.

These musings served as the jumping off point for a visual exploration crafted through my graphic lens. I began researching the visual language associated with global shipping. A language that has to unify countries and continents. A language of bar codes, symbols, logos and QR Codes. Sometimes a language for automation and non-human direction. My research also led me to flags (national and maritime) and how these serve as a literal language on the open sea. These symbols, remixed and re-imagined, serve as the backbone for this mural, further expressed through the setting for the exhibition.

~ Paul Darragh.